canon rumors FORUM

I have found that my Canon 28mm F2.8 performs pretty well on crop sensors and is cheap + cheerful. I do prefer my 25mm F2.8 Contax-Zeiss (with a 10 GBP adapter) is better but it's entirely manual - does not suit everybody.

I have found that my Canon 28mm F2.8 performs pretty well on crop sensors and is cheap + cheerful. I do prefer my 25mm F2.8 Contax-Zeiss (with a 10 GBP adapter) is better but it's entirely manual - does not suit everybody.

Unless I had bad copy, most photos I took with 28mm were soft-soft-and more soft.

@ OP, Canon Ef-S 17-55 IS 2.8 is one of the best lens for crop. It's little over your budget. I hope you can find a decent used lens on CL.

You can't go wrong with a28mm. I used the 28mm f1.8 as my normal lens on crop body and it's much better than any zoom lens I've tried. The sigma 30mm f1.4 will also do the trick. It got a lot of nice reviews. I just opted for the canon 28mm because I intend to go for fullframe after some time (and I did). The MFD of 28mm F1.8 is so close that you can almost practically stick it to your child's face. It is very sharp from F2.2. If you don't have AFMA, you'll have a hard time shooting fully open.

I forgot to add, the AF of 28mm f1.8 is also fast enough to cover moving kids which later on I believe you'd want to take. That's one of its advantages over the Sigma 30mm F1.4.

I have found that my Canon 28mm F2.8 performs pretty well on crop sensors and is cheap + cheerful. I do prefer my 25mm F2.8 Contax-Zeiss (with a 10 GBP adapter) is better but it's entirely manual - does not suit everybody.

Unless I had bad copy, most photos I took with 28mm were soft-soft-and more soft.

@ OP, Canon Ef-S 17-55 IS 2.8 is one of the best lens for crop. It's little over your budget. I hope you can find a decent used lens on CL.

I have the 18-50 2.8 and find it's dof isn't narrow enough for what I'm looking to get, hence why I'm looking at primes.

I have found that my Canon 28mm F2.8 performs pretty well on crop sensors and is cheap + cheerful. I do prefer my 25mm F2.8 Contax-Zeiss (with a 10 GBP adapter) is better but it's entirely manual - does not suit everybody.

Unless I had bad copy, most photos I took with 28mm were soft-soft-and more soft.

@ OP, Canon Ef-S 17-55 IS 2.8 is one of the best lens for crop. It's little over your budget. I hope you can find a decent used lens on CL.

I have the 18-50 2.8 and find it's dof isn't narrow enough for what I'm looking to get, hence why I'm looking at primes.

Thanks. Ttyl

If you want to get the narrow DoF, try getting closer to your subject with it at 50mm @f/2.8. The DoF tends to get narrower as the subject gets closer to the camera. That's about the only way you can get stuff thrown really out of focus with a super-wide like 14mm or 8mm fisheye, get the subject really, really, really close to the lens, then the background manages to get far enough out of the acceptable DoF you can actually see it.

I have a 2 month old... one that doesn't want to go to bed tonight... and I have mostly been using a 85mm f/1.8 with her. I have a full frame camera and that does make a huge difference, but I like the results. The shallow depth of field, the sharpness, etc.

I did have a speedlite attached and I would bounce light from the walls and more often than not I got a results I was really pleased with.

Take a bunch of photos... the babies don't do much at that age so you have plenty of time to frame the shot.

I've found the ef-s 60mm macro to work well for babies and for general portraits. I have a crop camera and I found that I prefer the 60 over the 85 1.8 for such shots. And, of course there is the macro shots of feet, hands, or what ever your imagination comes up with.

I would concur with the 85 f1.8 for crop or FF. My favorite portrait lens is the 70-200 on crop or FF, so I would agree that the focal length would work well.

For shorter lenses, I have the old non-IS 35 f2.0. It is a good lens and relatively sharp on crop. For closer portrait/candids, the isolation has been quite pleasing. But, I have essentially replaced this lens with the 40 f2.8 pancake on either crop of FF for those times when I don't want the bigger zoom.

One other note. For infants, I would recommend a USM or STM lens. When my daughter was young, my old Tokina 28-200 (on a film Rebel) was so loud in focusing that it often spoiled the moment because my daughter would hear it. I switched to a short Canon USM zoom and had better success at these moments. Maybe this won't be a big issue, but the 50 1.8 and the older 35 2.0 just might be loud enough to spoil some moments, especially at close range.

All things considered, I'd grab the 85 f1.8. Even on crop, I think it will give you enough room to frame portraits in most indoor settings. It will also give you the isolation that you're looking for and would be great "stealth" lens for candids. I love my 70-200 f2.8, but the 85 f1.8 and the very similar 100 f2.0 are still on my wish list for this reason.

Frankly, if people, candids, and portraits are the norm, then the 40 f2.8 and the 85 f1.8 would make a nice combination.

When my boy, now 2 years old, was just about to be born, I wanted very badly a 24-70. I purchased one used, but in excellent condition, 3 days after he was born. I know this specific lens is outside of your purchase budget by about 3x, although I will say it's now my favorite lens of all my lenses. I have a 7d crop camera.

What I have found is, I very rarely use less than, say, 45-50 mm focal length when photographing portraits. I just don't like the wide-angle distortion of people's faces. I will only use less than 45mm when photographing a small room of people only if I wouldn't get any photo at all by observing my 'don't shoot under 45mm' rule.

Even though people do the 'math' of, 'well, it's a 1.4 crop factor times a 35mm focal length, so that's right about 50mm....', that is not accurate. It's still the exact same distortion of a 35mm focal length.

So, to the point of your question, generically, I would not recommend any lens less than 45-50mm focal length, with a max aperture of smaller than 3.2, for the photographic purposes you stated. I don't know what specific lens that would be to recommend, but there it is.

For the time i was in the hospital, I honestly just used my cellphone camera and my Sony DSC-N1 snap-and-shoot camera. I used my DSLR after returning home.